Only when the tunnel is completely dark, you can see the true light. Light, a vital element of the “magic” that originates in gastronomy.

In the 2022 season we started a cycle around light. Only when the tunnel is completely dark, you can see the true light. Light, a vital element of the “magic” that originates in gastronomy.

In this first chapter around the light, we take a look without vertigo at a fascinating universe, that of “les pesqueres de cingle”, fishing “a l’encesa” and the cliffs of the Marina Alta.

From the land to the cliffs, we suggest a surprising gastronomic tour rooted in a very unique tradition. We seek the light of tradition…

L’encesa was a thousand-year-old fishing art that was practiced on the cliffs of our Marina Alta. It consisted of pointing a light source at the sea in order to attract good quality fish. Some brave countrymen, not professionally skilled in fishing, used this method risking their lives every winter night in search for a better life.

We are inspired by the courage of the farmers who every night ventured into an unknown, inhospitable world, to those precipices where fenoll marí, lavender, rosemary and thyme take root and silene flourishes. And this sea of saltpeter, iodine and life inspires us. The fish, seduced by the light of the carbide lamp fall into the “rall”, a bewitching lightning.

The dream of an “enceser” (fisherman of the night)

“An enceser dreamed that he was Ulysses and sleepwalked towards the cliffs. He walked winding paths of rosemary and lavender. He descended a wooden ladder attached to the rocks. He clung to the flimsy rungs. He arrived at his fishery and there, sitting on the hurdle, he undertook a long journey guided by the Pleiades. He wasn’t in a state of madness. It was just a dream, maybe a suicidal dream, or maybe just the hunger or the longing for freedom. Maybe his own odyssey. It’s hard to guess. Even he himself, in his own reverie, did not know.

And by the light of the flickering flame of the carbide lamp, he saw the Sirens, the Laestrygonians, and the savage Poseidon approaching. They felt a savage love for the light and the fisherman was afraid. He knew that, deep down, he carried them with him in his soul, and he was tempted to lose himself with them, but he didn’t because in his dream he was Ulysses and there was a Penelope.

When he woke up, he no longer knew if he was an enceser who had dreamed he was Ulysses, or if he was Ulysses who dreamt he was an enceser. His hands were stained with ink and his heart was full of courage. The only thing he remembered, was that the road had been long, full of adventures, full of experiences.

And at last he understood what the Ithacas meant. And what it meant to return, after all, home.”

Fustes refers to small wooden stems that these fishermen left as a safety signal on a rock that was located at an intersection of roads leading to home. Every enceser had its own wooden stem that he left on the rock when returning home after a night of fishing. If at sunrise, one or more of those stems were missing, it meant that one of the fishermen could be in trouble and so the others would organize a search.

When the enceser was able to leave his stem, it meant that he once again reached the security and tranquility of his home. So on that rock started the return to the origin of that daily trip, full of dangers, that they faced every winter night. That morning once again he arrived safe and sound at home, with the satisfaction of the night’s catch, but insecure of what the following fishing night would bring.

Just like that brave fisherman returned to his origin after each dangerous catch hanging on the cliff, we as BonAmb love to return to the past of the gastronomic culture of our Marina Alta to give it the significance it deserves.